1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a skin covered foamed plastic article, to be used, for example, for car seat cushions and seat backs.
2. Description of the Background Art
The skin covered foamed plastic articles have been used for car seat cushions and seat backs. As shown in FIG. 1, such a skin covered foamed plastic article 1 is conventionally made of a pad member 3 covered by a skin cover 2. The pad member 3 and the skin cover 2 were used to be manufactured separately and combined together later, but it has become fashionable to manufacture an entire skin covered foamed plastic article 1 as a skin covered pad member at once by making the foamed plastic inside the skin cover 2 placed over a molding surface, so that the process of combining at later time may be omitted for the sake of efficiency of the manufacturing process.
This is usually done by placing a skin cover 2 over a lower mold and assembling the lower mold with an upper mold such that edges of the skin cover 2 is pinched between parting lines between the upper mold and the lower mold, and then pouring liquid foam resin into a space between the upper mold and the lower mold which will become a pad member 3 covered with the skin cover 2 after the foaming process.
The skin cover 2 is often made of a surface skin 2a such as a cloth or vinyl chloride leather, on back of which a wadding 2b made of such material as slab urethane is attached.
The surface skin 2a and the wadding 2b of the skin cover 2 is attached by applying adhesive on one of their mutually facing sides, or is flame laminated by melting a surface of the wadding 2b by a flame treatment.
However, the conventional skin covered foamed plastic article has the following problems.
First, in a case the pad member 3 is separately premanufactured and this pad member 3 is covered by the skin cover 2 later, the manufacturing process becomes cumbersome, togetherness of the skin cover 2 and the pad member 3 is lost, the softness of the skin covered foamed plastic article 1 is obtained only from the softness of the pad member 3, and the deflection curve of the skin covered foamed plastic article 1 is fixed, so that it has been impossible to improve the comfortableness of a sitter.
Also, when the skin cover 2 comprising a surface skin 2a on a front side and a wadding 2b attached on a back side of the surface skin 2a is placed on the lower mold and liquid foam resin is poured inside the skin cover 2, the liquid foam resin penetrated into the wadding 2b on the back side of the skin cover 2 irregularly to form a penetrated portion 5, which worsened a feel of the skin cover 2 enormously. Namely, in pouring the liquid foam resin, pouring pressure and foaming pressure are exerted strongly on a part of the wadding 2b, so that the penetrated portion 5 is formed at this part, or a penetrated layer of irregular thickness is formed, which made the softness of the skin covered foamed plastic article 1 irregular and worsened the feel and comfortableness of the skin covered foamed plastic article 1.
Furthermore, the penetrated layer 5 is not formed uniformly such that there appears portions where the amount of penetration is large, and in such portions where the amount of penetration is large there has been a problem that the penetration could reach the surface skin 2a so that the liquid foam resin leaks from and damages the surface skin 2a. For this reason, the thickness of the wadding 2b cannot be made thinner.
In addition, the conventional skin cover 2 has not matched well with the foaming mold, so that when the skin cover 2 is place on the foaming mold, the skin cover 2 does not fit tightly on the foaming mold, which made the process of placing difficult, and the skin cover 2 may develop wrinkles as it is place on the foaming mold.
Moreover, in attaching the surface skin 2a and the wadding 2b of the skin cover 2, the application of adhesive is uneconomical as the adhesive is expensive. On the other hand, for the flame laminated case, the surface skin 2a and the wadding 2b do not stick together when the melting is insufficient, or the wadding 2b stiffens when the melting is excessive so that the matching with the foaming mold worsens, the wrinkles appear, and a feel is hardened.